Casualties mount as Assad blitz continues

Bombing resumed this morning of the besieged and pummelled Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta as the United Nations secretary general expressed alarm over the civilian casualties.

At least ten people had died in the bombing by mid-morning, in addition to more than 230 on Monday and Tuesday.

Doctors and aid workers described wrenching scenes in what monitors said were some of the most intense air raids of the Syrian civil war.

The United Nations said seven hospitals in the district had now been struck, with three of them put out of service altogether. It issued desperate appeals for political intervention to stop the carnage.

The secretary general, António Guterres, was “deeply alarmed by the escalating situation in eastern Ghouta and its devastating impact on civilians,”…

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